To:THE SUPREME MILITARY COUNCIL

Published:First published in 1931 inLenin Miscellany XVIII.

      Printed from the original.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1975,

      Moscow,Volume 44,

      pages87c-88a.Translated:Clemens DuttTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

May 16, 1918

Chairmanof the Supreme Military Council

TheSupreme Military Council is directed to send envoys—
through the appropriate military authorities at the front—for the purpose of signing a truce and establishing a
demarcation line on the South-Eastern (Don) Front. In
order that appropriate instructions may be given to the
military authorities, we inform you that our envoys are in
Kharkov at the present moment, headed by Sytin, military
commander of the Bryansk General Staff units, who has
been given instructions to secure a general truce on the
Voronezh and South-Eastern fronts. A truce, especially on
the South-Eastern (Don) Front, must be secured as quickly
as possible, in the last resort agreeing even to accepting
as a basis the present disposition of military forces.

Sytinhas been instructed to try to secure through the
medium of the German Command direct contact with our
Command on the South-Eastern Front for co-ordinated
action.

Withthe same aim in view, the Supreme Military Council,
by all the means available to it, should maintain constant
contact both with Sytin and with our Command on the
South-Eastern Front.

V.Ulyanov(Lenin)Chairman, C.P.C.